Answer to Job

Art Glass, lower panels, from God Answers Job, First Presbyterian Church Edwardsville, click the image to link to description.

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 29, Job 42:1-6, 10-17

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you …. –Job 42:5

While serving in Springfield, one morning I responded to a call from the emergency room at Memorial Hospital. When I arrived, I was ushered into a conference room where I sat with the daughters of a couple seniors who were among our most active volunteers. Very early, before dawn, they’d been on their way to join a tour group, and board a bus for a travel adventure. Somehow, a stop sign had been missed. Another vehicle had struck the passenger door, and the impact had crushed Dorothy with such force that she had not survived. Charley was conscious, but was being prepared for emergency surgery. The daughters, through their tears, made the request that I pray with Charley, but not mention the fact that their mother was dead. They were worried it would be more than he could bear at that moment.

A few minutes later, I was behind the curtain, and beside the bed, with all the usual medical hardware, wires, and tubes you find in such places. We exchanged a few words, then Charley squeezed my hand, and said, “John, they won’t tell me anything about Dorothy. I have to assume that she is dead.” Then he looked at me, completely focused to see and to hear how I would respond.

I replied as best I could, and prayed as best I was able under the circumstances. But I think you can appreciate why the words I offered that day, and in the days that followed, felt inadequate. At such times, we surround the hurt and grieving with loving support. Later, as the powerful emotions of a sudden tragic turn of events begin to fade, it’s not unusual to find yourself asking questions that have no easy answers. “When things were going so beautifully, why did God let this happen?”  “If God is good and powerful, then why did events unfold that way?”

When we go through such experiences, and ask such questions, we are in the company of Job. The story of Job is one of the oldest in our Bible. Many cultures of the Ancient Near East record similar tales, some of which go back more than four-thousand years. Some scholars suggest that Job is a composite text, with pieces sewn together at different times, for different reasons. In many times and cultures, people of faith experiencing heartache have found a kindred soul in Job, a character they can turn to for expressions of lament during troubling circumstances.[1]

The Book of Job characterizes God in terms unfamiliar and uncomfortable to most of us.  A cozy relationship with a Heavenly Parent who provides easy solutions is not who we find in this story.   Rather, God is portrayed as a master who allows one servant, Satan, to convince him that another servant, Job, should be put to these awful tests.

Carl Jung is a name that some of you will recognize as one of the founding fathers of psychiatry. He also was the son of a Swiss Reformed pastor, and certainly could be called an expert on religious themes in literature.  Relatively late in life, he wrote a book entitled “Answer to Job,” in which he dared to criticize the way this book of the Bible portrays God:

It is amazing to see how easily Yahweh, quite without reason, had let himself be influenced by one of his sons (Satan), by a doubting thought . . . . His faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose . . . . (Job’s) justified complaint finds no hearing with the judge who is so much praised for his justice.[2]

The ending of the story, in which Job's prosperity is restored twofold, brings no comfort to Jung.  Like most biblical scholars, he considers this section to be an invention of a later editor uncomfortable with God's apparent lack of compassion or compensation for Job’s trouble.   But this new conclusion hardly accomplishes its purpose, for it is as if God is saying  “So you have lost your sons and daughters?  No harm done, I will give you new and better ones.” [3]  Would anyone who has lost a family member to senseless tragedy feel compensated by a “replacement”?

In Job, God doesn’t speak the answer that we would like to hear. Yet, as the story approaches its conclusion, there is a hint that what is lacking in the speech of God may be made up for in the vision of God. Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” 

In the midst of seemingly senseless suffering, is it possible to see God? As a partial answer, I’ll tell you about a member of the congregation I served in Wichita.

“Frieda” (not her real name) was well known in the church as the wife and mother of an apparently happy and successful family.  It came as a shock to many when her marriage ended in divorce.  Within twelve months, Frieda found a lump that turned out to be malignant. Surgery and radiation were followed by months of chemotherapy, one three-week hospitalization in isolation, then a long rehabilitation at home. 

One morning Frieda called with an anxious request.  She said something had happened, she couldn't talk about it on the phone, and would I come right over.   Such a request from Frieda was unusual, and her home was close to the church.  Before long, we were talking in her living room.

When I arrived, Frieda was obviously upset, but seemed unwilling to talk.  She was smoking, a habit she reverted to when under stress.  “Frieda, what's wrong?” I asked.  “I think I'm going crazy,” she replied. 

What Frieda told me next will sound irrational; so let me assure you that she seemed to the average observer a very rational person.  Frieda was from a family that included medical professionals.  She held a management position in a major corporation.  Her oldest child was a student at an Ivy League school.  Her reputation for service to the church and community was excellent.    

Frieda told me that she had stirred that morning with the dim sense that it might be dawn.  As she awakened a bit more, she realized that she couldn't move, and that the light she perceived seemed to come from a position over her bed.  Fear began to take hold, and she sensed that the light contained some kind of spiritual presence. 

All of Frieda’s anxieties about her health, her future, and the future of her children rushed to her mind, and she began asking what was going to happen to her.  Would she get better?  Would she live to see her youngest child graduate from high school? 

Then, she said, it was as if she heard a voice, not audibly but in her mind, saying, “Don't be afraid.”

She asked again about her health.  But would she be all right?  Would her children be all right? 

A second and final time the voice said, “Don't be afraid.” 

Slowly the light and paralysis faded, and Frieda was left alone in the first glow of morning.

Frieda and I talked about the role that chemotherapy, medication, and stress may have played in bringing on such a vision.  Later that week she consulted her physician about possible hallucinations.  A similar event never was repeated. 

Frieda did recover, and eventually returned to work. In the end, she and I were left with the sense that her experience was consistent with biblical faith.   Here was a messenger of God who appeared with mystery, power, even terror, who brought not an explanation but a vision and hope, not unlike God as portrayed in Job. 

When circumstances test our faith, we may feel like Frieda or Job.  We ask questions about things that hurt us badly and disturb us deeply. There may be no obvious answers to prayer, or an answer that make no sense to us.

During those times, perhaps our situation could be compared to that of the author who penned  “Footprints in the Sand,” who looked back upon life’s journey, and found that during the most difficult moments, the Lord’s footprints seemed to disappear from the sand beside him.  He asked why the Lord seemed to abandon him in his hour of need.  Finally, he was given the reply, “My child, I love you, and I would never leave you.  When, during your times of trial and suffering – when you see only one set of footprints – it was then that I carried you.”

Some of you are living through a dark night of the soul.  I pray that you may hear God’s encouraging voice saying, “Don’t be afraid.”  I pray that for you, darkness may give way to dawn, and that you may see that the footprints in the sand were those of God carrying you through the night to a new day.

NOTES

[1] The book’s literary history is summarized in the “Introduction” by Marvin H. Pope, Job, Vol. 15 in The Anchor Bible, New York, Doubleday & Co, Inc., 1965, pp. xiii-lxxxii.

[2] Carl Gustav Jung, Answer to Job.  Trans. R. F. C. Hull  (New York: The World Publishing Co., 1954), 37-40.

[3] Jung, p. 49.

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